Speech

Harmful principles beyond class or hope

Dry out the already dried-out conscience

Of well-fed, well-said, well-dead no-offence

Absorbed in their phones of yep, um, nope.

Yon elected trade their pliable language

Advertisements for an endless good life,

Sounds bytes of no heart, ambiguous strife

Truth given short shrift, left to languish.

Push come to shove the forests did what trees

Do in summer dried-out the long year through,

Turn outward burn inward with heightened breeze.

No mincing words, fire’s deafening speeches

Leave nothing untouched, absolutely true

Their compact with life as far as heat reaches.

Unspeakable

Unspeakable is pattern of grasses

Green bends on shaded stems beneath young trees

Spacing themselves year by year to sky-seas,

That blue most soon known that daily passes.

Unspeakable mind of cat through herb pots

Up on chair, roof, walking well bent fenceline

Down again bamboo asleep head inclined

A time then off to rooms indoors sun spots.

Unspeakable clenched knucklebone and nail

Where words flow across index ledge anew

As if whole gardens spoke in line and tale,

Contrivance of grass-word leaf-word sky-word

Which is easy for me to say to you

Dear forthright reader trapped in skin, not heard.

Trappist

Dear Father Louis, TRAPPIST-1, not you

But the named nearby ultracool dwarf  star

Parents seven terrestrial planets oooh aaah!

Goldilocks hot and cold, but not too.

The most famous anonymous man alive

Who left his ego at the abbey door

Only to meet him inside more and more,

Lo the heavens were awesome and high five.

Novice master, paper chase hero,

You were the star wishing you were nameless:

A line of ink titled Trappist Zero.

It’s all over now, just words and silence

As the sun beats down and who is blameless,

Each name signing off its mortal compliance.

Cinema

Lately he’s stopped going out to the cinema

The hallways of doors into edited dreamscapes

Big time stars their streamline dialogue jackanapes

And he, a silent part, gazing, Seat 5 Row R.

The charger cinema in his top coat pocket

Home computer cinema daze without flicker

He’s let go of too for visions closer quicker:

That high sky round and found, not reliant on socket,

Uplift of hours where sunlight colours colour,

Strangers’ faces formal and no two similar

Before opening their mouths on the next saga,

And the scene change of day, no cut or curtain call,

And with eyelid touch of night his own cinema

Of lifetime reversal dreams, his new normal.

Process

Others act up, they’re kept on their mettle

But I read once that John Keats, tubercular,

Took a long bath, to use the vernacular,

Before dashing off lines in a fine fettle.

Then he dressed in soft raiment, shirt specially fine.

He took a firm apple, juice like to prosecco

Before setting to words, quick as a gecko.

He peeled and quartered, he set them in line

Then poured a glass glinting of best Roman wine

Nothing too hurried for those with his ink fix

Since what point are forms for readers wanting signs   

Be it ode, love letter, new, unweariéd:  

What’s tricks pick up sticks only twenty-six

His bloody hankie, the late period.

Past

We lived on atmosphere fearless alone,

The cat made us purr, the dog fetched a bone.

Looks were misleading, books so one-sided,

Such special pleading proved, well, misguided.

You too were one of the usual suspects,

They were statistics in outlying districts.

Gadgets were made too sensitive by half,

Cars built to last, look don’t make me laugh.

An atheist was a most fervent believer,

His music leaving us all a-quiver.

Ideals were photoshopped, wrinkles were real,

It took all you had to know how to feel.

To deal with what’s Now would ofttimes suffice,

The settings went stone cold inside your device.

Ask

I have told you once, I will say so again

Shyness, though charming, limits your chances;

Coyness, endearing, makes no advances.

It’s important you know. Question is, when?

Ask me and I’ll tell you to have a try.

I’ll tell you to try and I’ll have you ask.

To have me, tell me, it’s (try) no big ask.

I won’t say no not to you, how could I

Who write epic romances all summer long

To a toothsome girl in some distant land

Such love that’s but words in some twosome song?

Ask me, for else it’s no case of whether

But the bomb despair, loveless bomb, off-hand

Bomb, the bomb that will bring us together.

That I can see, Erik Didriksen has not yet turned any song by The Smiths into a sonnet, which rather betrays his homegrown American pop bias. So, here is the sonnet of the song ‘Ask’ and also for your entertainment, the movie of the song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoo9Vu1a9bU